Page:The Conquest.djvu/137



"Your brother, the General, and I journeyed together to Philadelphia, when he was Commissioner of Indian affairs. Is he well and enjoying the fruits of his valour?" continued the Colonel.

"My brother is disabled, the result of exposure in his campaigns. He will never recover. I am now visiting Virginia in behalf of his accounts with the Assembly,—they have never been adjusted. He even thought you, his old friend, might be able to lend assistance, either in Virginia or in Congress."

"I am honoured by the request. You may depend upon me."

Colonel George Hancock had been a member of the Fourth Congress in Washington's administration, and with a four-horse family coach travelled to and from Philadelphia attending the sessions.

Here the little Judy's earliest recollections had been of the beautiful Dolly Todd who was about to wed Mr. Madison. Jefferson was Secretary of State then, and his daughters, Maria and Martha, came often to visit Judy's older sisters, Mary and Caroline.

Judy's hair was a fluff of gold then; shading to brown, it was a fluff of gold still, that Granny Molly found hard to keep within bounds. Harriet, her cousin, of dark and splendid beauty, a year or two older, was ever the inseparable companion of Judy Hancock.

"Just fixing up the place again," explained Colonel Hancock. "It has suffered from my absence at Philadelphia. A tedious journey, a tedious journey from Fincastle."

But to the children that journey had been a liberal education. The long bell-trains of packhorses, the rumbling Conestogas, the bateaux and barges, the great rivers and dense forests, the lofty mountains and wide farmlands, the towns and villages, Philadelphia itself, were indelibly fixed in their memory and their fancy.

Several times in the course of the next few years, William Clark had occasion to visit Virginia in behalf of his brother, and each time more and more he noted the budding graces of the maids of Fincastle.